Details Of The Next WordPress Default Theme Twenty Twelve Announced

It’s only a few weeks since the release of WordPress 3.3 however we are starting to see details of 3.4 already. Jane Wells announced at the start of the week that the next major update will include a new default theme called Twenty Twelve (not surprisingly considering the names of the last two default themes).

You will be pleased to know that WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg will be overseeing the development of Twenty Twelve and ensuring that it is ‘kind of different from before, generally palatable, and that Matt likes’. I’m glad that Matt will be taking control of this project as the designs of his own website have always been good.

Whilst I was initially impressed with Twenty Eleven, after using the design on one of my websites I found it to be a step backwards from the previous default design Twenty Ten. Margins were larger and by default the sidebar wasn’t used in the single.php template (I still don’t know why they didn’t at least include an option for this).

By the sounds of it, they still aren’t sure whether to start with the Twenty Ten or Twenty Eleven theme for the base code. Twenty Eleven is obviously more recent however as Jane puts it – 2010 has gotten more updates and had more eyes on it’.

Some other notable notes about the Twenty Twelve design is the removal of the featured image from the header. By default no image will be used in the header though there will be an option to change the height if a header image is used. The theme will also default to a static front page and ‘clever things’ that aren’t very useful will not be included.

One feature I am glad about is the inclusion of a mobile version of the theme. Internet usage on mobile devices continues to increase so it’s good that this will be included by default.

No other details have been announced as yet but when they are I’ll be sure to let you know. I’m definitely pleased with the direction the theme is going and I hope they can design a theme that had the same impact that Twenty Ten had.